Spotify study reveals Penn students love Magic Man, hate Kendrick Lamar and sleep late

Kendrick Lamar is not a favorite of University of Pennsylvania students, according to Spotify  | Photo by John Vettese

Okay, number nerds, this is pretty interesting: Spotify this week released a study on “the most musical universities in America,” ranking schools based on amount of music listened overall and number of subscriptions at their student rate. The University of Pennsylvania ranked as the 34th most musical school in the country, and the school-specific breakdown provides an interesting snapshot of the West Philly ivy league institution’s listening habits.

The school’s taste skews heavily towards pop and electronic music (in line with national trends), with Rhode Island synth rock five-piece Magic Man being a distinct favorite of the U-City crowd along with Ingrid Michaelson, Penn alum John Legend, and (oof) Maroon 5. They’re also fans of nationally-trending artists David Guetta, Iggy Azalea, Coldplay, Calvin Harris and Lorde.

On the opposite side of the spectrum, the study reveals that Penn students have no love for Kendrick Lamar, Christian music, or metal. (Or, presumably, Kendrick Lamar’s Christian metal band. Whatever, I hear it’s pretty awesome.)

Penn is the top school in the study for EDM, the top school for Latin music, and it listens to tropical music – however Spotify defines that – more than most schools. In terms of mood and tone, it gravitates towards music that is “melancholic” and “songwriter-oriented.” There’s also this huge list of “song attributes” that the study measures, and Penn ranks highest in “currency” and “discovery” but lowest in “liveness” and “speechiness.” So a live album or spoken word collection probably won’t get a lot of listens, but something really new and ahead of the curve will. (Unless it’s Kendrick.)

Now, for the creepy part of the study: Spotify knows when yousleep. Well, sort of. It tracks peak listening hours (the greatest number of Penn students are tuned in at 5:30 p.m.) as well as listening valleys (nobody is listening at 5:30 a.m.) and uses that to get a sense of overall sleeping habits. According to this, Penn students go to bed at 1 a.m. and wake up at 10 a.m. for an average of 9 hours of sleep per night. Cozy.

Also ranking on the study at number 15 is Penn State University, which loves Hardwell, doesn’t care for Lana Del Rey, listens to more punk than most schools and gets 15 minutes less sleep per night than University of Penn.

Read more about the study here, and check out Penn’s five distinctive favorites below.